The first time Joan saw the house she knew it was where she had been born. It wasn’t as though Joan could remember anybody describing it. Her parents had passed away when she was only three years old, so she retained no clear memory of them. Her grandparents had been forbidden to set foot on the property, both before the tragedy and after. It wasn’t because the name of the house — Fourways — stirred her memory. For some reason she’d always hated it with a rare violence not at all in character with her otherwise mild personality. It might be the trellis with the poison ivy twined round it. Then again that could be her aunt’s influence. No. In her heart she knew as surely as she could see the blacked out panes in the conservatory windows that this was the house in which she had been born.
(Adapted from: Lecumberri & Maidment, 2000. English Transcription Course. Arnold.)